


Lights in the Firmament of Heaven

by SimplexityJane



Series: In the Beginning [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 01:25:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1709918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." Genesis 1:14 KJV</p><p>Sometimes your life doesn't go where you thought it would. It's not always a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lights in the Firmament of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same 'verse as Fires in the Garden of Eden and The Name Thereof. I will eventually put them together as a series, probably. The minor violence is a mention of blood. There's also mentions of forced sterilization.

Thor falls out of the sky, and Darcy Lewis is never the same. It’ll be months, hell, _years_ , before she realizes it, though.

For now she tries to save the puppies, because if that _Destroyer_ thing is coming after this tiny town, someone has to remember the little people, the less-than-human people. She carries dogs and cats and a turtle out of the pet store and clutches Baker, because no one’s left to give him to. She doesn’t cry because she has someone to hold onto, even if that someone is twenty pounds of fluff.

She gives Baker to a little girl who pets him while he shakes, and Darcy leaves with Jane, off to find her new boyfriend.

* * *

Darcy Lewis knows the game. Sure, she doesn’t go at it like Pepper Potts, who wears heels she shouldn’t be able to run away in and holds people down with her words, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t _get it_. Darcy was an early bloomer, and her dad put a shotgun in her hands when a guy trailed her down two blocks when she was _thirteen_. She carries mace and knows how to take someone down, just like every girl in her dorm. She carries a taser because it’s like a gun but less permanent.

So she stays with Jane, because something’s happening—gods who are aliens, and Tony Stark and his Iron Man suit, and the Hulk, she’s never seen a smoother pattern of escalation—and Jane’s smart about science but _dumb_ when it comes to getting out of the way when she can’t fight.

Jane knows how to throw a right hook but not much else, so Darcy signs her up for self-defense classes. This is part of being a scientist wrangler, probably. That’s her excuse, at least, when Jane whines about her _data_.

She puts her foot down about it. Jane doesn’t need it, though, because the fucking _fascists_ send them all the way to Norway while the action’s happening.

“My parents live in Brooklyn,” Darcy says, numb, and Jane takes her hand. Afterward, they cry on each other (and cry some more when Darcy’s mom starts kvetching over the phone at them).

“ _Superheroes_ ,” she says, and Darcy can _feel_ her shaking her head. “What the hell is the world coming to?”

* * *

Thor comes back, and Darcy gives him a week to get used to London. Then she pounces.

“I need you to teach me how to fight,” she says. “For real, none of the bullshit ‘go for the eyes’ they teach you and never tell you how to do.” Thor frowns at her, ready to explain that she’s human, and weaker than him, how he could break her, but Darcy grew up in a very loud household and knows how to make sure she’s heard. “If we’re gonna be right here, we’re gonna be in the line of fire, and even my taser won’t be enough against a whole army.” She doesn’t mention his brother, since that’s a sore subject.

Thor nods, all solemn like he’s been since he came back, and then he grins hard enough that it looks like his face is going to split in half. Darcy can appreciate for a moment what Jane sees in him.

“It will be both exhilarating and educational, I assure you. I taught some of the young warriors, many years ago. You remind me of my own shield sister, the Lady Sif, though she was always enamored with battle and not as exuberant as you are. She too insisted I teach her before we were granted the King’s approval.”

Thor teaches her how to fight for real, which for him means he teaches her how to fight with a sword.

Also knives and an actual mace, the kind you hit people _in the face_ with, but a _sword_.

They’re still in London when S.H.I.E.L.D. goes down, and Darcy teaches Thor a little about PR. She does this, rambling and shaking, and Thor has her practice her blocks before she finally breaks down.

“They were supposed to be the _good_ bad guys,” she says, chest heaving. She’s going to throw up even though she hasn’t had anything to eat, and Pop Pop’s voice is in her head, _they’ll try to convince you they’re good, but they’re not, they’re just the same faces but a different excuse_ , and she thinks about a number on his arm, how the planes would have numbered her one out of a million (she isn’t going to lie to herself and pretend she’s not a threat), and even fighting wouldn’t stop it.

She breaks down, and when Jane tells them they’re moving to New York she goes gratefully. And when Maria Hill looks at the way she hustles Jane around and offers her a paying job she takes it, because she isn’t going to let the bad guys do this again.

* * *

“So, Level 3 is about _security_ ,” Darcy says, pushing her glasses closer to her face. The new Level 3s, a whole conference room full of them, stare at her with rapt attention. “Sorry guys, you’re the human shields. You’ve got Kevlar, though, and Ms. Potts’s R&D department is coming up with an even sturdier material as we speak—and I’m not exaggerating, I threatened to take his coffee away if he didn’t have it by the end of the week.”

There are uncomfortable chuckles that Darcy zeroes in on. Not a lot of people _want_ to be a Level 3, and for good reason. They have just enough of a clearance level that they can go where the big guys go but can’t touch a thing, which means the only thing they can really do is escort diplomats around and serve as human shields. Level 2 collaborates with law enforcement on “sensitive issues”, and Level 1s are just given the clearance level so they can get in the building.

Darcy was a Level 1 for twenty minutes before she complained to Thor.

“Luckily, though, most of you will only be here while you go through your official Defense training. Then you get to be on a computer for another year if you want to be a field agent, sorry. I mean, _I_ like Level 4, there are like two hundred games on the servers.” More chuckles, but this time they’re less fragile. Darcy’s done this twice now, and humor gets them every time. Something about her makes them trust her. It’s probably the boobs. “Now, your Defense handbooks have maps, and there are maps on every wall—I know, I know, exposed floor plans stopped being sexy in the nineties, but hey, we’re new. If you have any questions, look in the handbook _first_ before you ask me. Polygraph tests will be administered _randomly_. If you get the urge to cheat, know that we have alien technology that doesn’t just look at your  heartbeat.” With that, she dismisses them to their first day.

“You could be less terrifying,” one of _her assistants_ says, and Darcy shrugs.

“I don’t think the truth is terrifying,” she says, taking the StarkPad. She has to figure out who’s earned her wrath and a seat beside Senator Flores, preferably _before_ he schmoozes with Pepper.

She doesn’t like him, really. He spits when he talks. But he’s anti-registration, and technically Darcy’s Extra Special Taser counts as something that would need registering on the current bill.

(Captain America ranted for half an hour about the right to privacy. Darcy has it on tape. It’s all very surreal.)

Darcy thinks it’s going well, mostly. She’s gotten better with swords, and she can conceal a knife on her well enough that Level 2s don’t recognize it.

She feels like maybe her life took a turn left somewhere, but she likes it.              

* * *

Three days after Pepper Potts finds out she’s pregnant she promotes Darcy to Level 6. Technically this makes Darcy a field agent _and_ management.

Darcy is not amused.

“There’s _no_ reason to make me a field agent,” she says. Now she _has_ to shoot guns, which isn’t the problem—she’s already qualified because it makes Level 4s try harder, the laziest person on base being as good as she is with guns. The problem is that Pepper is giving up SID because she’s pregnant.

“You need the experience, Darcy,” Pepper says. She most definitely doesn’t know that Darcy knows that she’s pregnant, and Darcy doesn’t want to get set on fire. “You’ve been asking for field experience for a year.”

By “asking” Pepper means “bugging me and every other Avenger about it, _including_ _fucking Pym_ , at dinner”.

“I haven’t requested a different clearance level. In fact, if I could just _not_ know about the nastier things SID does, that would be great, thanks.”

Pepper shakes her head, and Darcy’s stomach sinks.

“There’s too much power in Stark hands,” she says. It’s a lie, but Darcy slumps anyway. “Plus I’m not really qualified to lead SID, but with time _you_ could be. If you still feel this way in six years I’ll promote Natasha.”

Darcy swallows. Six years means about five years of both Pepper and Tony in danger while their kid is in even _more_ danger. It means she’ll be the head of one of _the_ major counter terrorism agencies before she’s thirty-five. Retirement at sixty if she even survives that long—it’s too much.

“My life is insane,” she says, and Pepper grins. She’ll make a good mom.

* * *

Ultron happens.

Darcy is still a Level 6, which means she’s one of the agents on the ground. Darcy directs an evacuation and doesn’t think about Pepper, seven months pregnant and still fighting, or her agents (they’re qualified but this isn’t what they trained for, isn’t even what _Darcy_ trained for). She helps people get out, and she pulls the crazy people back.

Take this girl, who’s got a _bow and arrow._

“Look, Hawkeye Two, you’re a civilian,” she growls, and the girl hits one of the Ultrons. She growls again, shooting the tin cans out of the sky. “Agent Kaplan, get this kid out!”

Kaplan’s a kid himself, but he’s one of the special ones. Darcy doesn’t think about it, honestly. It makes her head hurt. He picks up the girl and hauls her out of there, which gets him her respect (and a bruise from a high-heeled shoe).

The Avengers save the day, of course, and Darcy finds some suspicious arrows in the corpses afterward. She glares Kaplan down, but she gets a new agent out of it.

It’s a mixed bag.

* * *

Pepper has a baby boy she names James. His middle initial is Y., and Darcy doesn’t ask. He’s Extremis positive, which means interesting things for the Potts-Stark wifi, and even though he’s non-verbal both Tony and Pepper agree that he’s a genius.

He’s sort of cute (looks just like Pepper, luckily), but he spits up all the time. Darcy’s just glad she’s got a six month diplomatic mission because that means she won’t be back until he’s a toddler. She wines and dines the mutants and humans into doing what she wants, and they don’t even know she’s done it until she’s gone.

Level 7 turns out to be the Special Lobbying Hell. Darcy both loves and hates it. She gets eighteen pairs of shoes out of it and makes a number of enemies and friends. She isn’t a specialist, even after three years at SID (SWORD, cute but not public yet), so she doesn’t get sent in with teams like some people. Her first job is to make sure the “bad guys” don’t start shit, and, if they do, to deal with them from the inside.

This time it’s too close. Darcy’s killed twice before, went to the psychologist for a month to cope and got real therapy from Thor and Jane, who both _get it_ (Jane even more than she did, since she’d had to kill people from an alternate reality and has a higher body count than Darcy at this point). She isn’t going to apologize for thinking her own life is more important than her enemies’.

It still cuts her, watching someone she was talking to like a friend fall to the ground, dead. They don’t tell you that arterial spray gets on your arm if you’re not quick enough, that blood really can be as red as it is in shitty B movies. They don’t tell you that after the climax scene the hero has to get her people out too, and she has to keep civilians calm all the while.

“You have to keep yourself from breaking so they don’t,” Steve, _Captain America_ , tells her. Captain America feels the same way she does even though his body count is a thousand times hers. If it means she’ll never stop hurting, that makes her both hopeful and angry.

She lets herself be seduced by Natasha, who’s only higher ranking than she is in name, and Natasha doesn’t flinch when she sees Darcy’s scars from Ultron and other missions (or the way she isn’t soft, not really, just pretends to be). Darcy doesn’t ask about the bullet wounds, just like Natasha doesn’t ask about the knife wounds.

Natasha makes breakfast. It’s very nice breakfast.

* * *

Mutants are exposed, Captain America gets shot in the chest three times, Bucky Barnes skins Norman Osborne alive (with help from Steve’s friends), and Pepper smooths everything over, all in a six month period.

“I would marry her,” Darcy says, and Natasha glares at her. They’re up to the Toothbrush-and-Drawer Stage, which is really cool, something Darcy’s never done before. “If you were a supervillain.”

If Natasha were a supervillain the world would be _fucked_ , and they both know it. Natasha should be running SWORD (S.W.O.R.D.? What words would they even _use_?). She runs the scary parts of it already. Darcy has been in meetings with Pepper and Natasha and left early, even though the records don’t report that. Natasha could rule the world.

“Actually, I think I’d join you if you were a supervillain,” Darcy says, and Natasha grins.

“I wouldn’t be able to do it without you. They would destroy me otherwise.”

Darcy doesn’t know what that means, actually. She knows there are a lot of reasons Pepper wants her to run SWORD, not the least that she can trust her not to be a fucking _Nazi_ , but she doesn’t think about other reasons all that often. She just does her job, and sometimes she has to change the job so her people survive. Sometimes that gets the Council yelling at her (through Pepper, of course, since a Level 8 isn’t supposed to know who the real Council is), but more often than not people like it when they win.

She shifts some of her official responsibilities to Kate Bishop and her team, who are both a fighting force and good at management, and she takes on new responsibilities. Knowing where all the Shadows are isn’t something that any one person can handle, and making sure they can get out if their covers get blown takes people from all departments. Darcy makes sure no one gets left without an extraction strategy, even the agents who are supposedly as good as Natasha and Clint.

“At least we don’t tap people’s phones,” she says, over the phone (it’s as secure a line as political favors can buy), and Jane laughs. She and Thor are taking a trip around the world, half honeymoon and half tour of the territory Thor swore to protect. Darcy isn’t sure how they’re gonna work out, him a functionally immortal alien and her an astrophysicist, but they’re alright for now. “Which, if anyone is listening, _is_ in the handbook, right under ‘shit that never works’. Oh, did Tony tell you yet, they gave him another doctorate.”

Jane snorts.

“They’re running out of engineering doctorates to give him,” she says. She’s got two honorary doctorates herself, for establishing a working Einstein-Rosen bridge to Asgard and making wormhole technology a possible transportation method. They gave Darcy a Masters in Poli-Sci after the mutant fiasco. It’s what the academic community does instead of money when you save their butts. “Hey, Darcy, I’ve gotta go. Thor has ice cream.”

They’re like big kids; at least Darcy doesn’t have to babysit them.

* * *

Darcy and Natasha move into another apartment in the Tower, which is a symbolic gesture at this point. All of Darcy’s stuff was over at Natasha’s place anyway (they move Darcy’s bed in because it’s more comfortable though). It’s just in time for _Loki_ to reveal himself again, and he’s not as much of a giant dick as he was all those years ago.

“I’m gonna shoot him,” Darcy says, getting her gun. Natasha takes her hand and disarms her, and when she turns to glare just _smirks_.

“ _We’re_ gonna shoot him,” she says.

Darcy’s ass over tits in love.

* * *

Six years and eight months after joining S.W.O.R.D., Darcy becomes its Director. Bishop finds the right words just in time, too (Sentient World Observation and Response Department, it has a nice ring to it). It’s been nine years since she met Thor.

“I never thought I’d be here,” she says honestly. Pepper nods at her, sipping her champagne. “I mean, seriously, _never_ , I woke up this morning and I didn’t believe today’d end up this way.”

“Well, don’t ever say that to the Council, and you should be fine,” Pepper says. “And I’ll stay on as a consultant for a while, so you should be fine.”

It’s all stuff they’ve talked about before, but it seems different now. Her clearance level is sitting there, actual paper signed by the actual president (go Hillary). Tomorrow she’ll go to work and sit in the Director’s office and do a completely different job than she did yesterday, and not even Natasha will know about some of it.

Today they drink champagne before Pepper shows her the really secret stuff, things that make her want to throw up. It’s the scary stuff, lists of names and places— _treaties_ that promise meta-humans support instead of humans, things _Thor_ knew about. Before now she thought the metas would be annihilated if they went up against humans, but there are at least three alien planets promising support.

Darcy doesn’t want to go to war. She _doesn’t_. Humans and meta-humans are the same people, really, and there are humans working for S.W.O.R.D. too. Not as many as metas, but a lot.

“You know I can’t promise that all of the agents will support metas, if this happens,” she finally says. _She’s_ skilled enough to count as a meta, even without any mutation or inner power (though Dr. Strange sometimes _looks_ at her).

“I knew that when I signed the treaties years ago. I still hope we don’t have to use them.”

Darcy isn’t stupid; she knows they’ll eventually have to fight. Yesterday she just thought they would lose.

Now she knows they’ll win.

* * *

“You ever think about having kids?” Darcy asks. Natasha looks up at her from where she’s pillowed on Darcy’s boobs (they’re still very nice), frowning.

“I can’t have kids. My original masters determined that the female agents would benefit from being sterilized, and the surgeries reversing that don’t allow a quick recovery time. I haven’t thought about it beyond that, since my life has always been dangerous.”

Darcy smiles against Natasha’s hair, hearing the lie. Her hair is long now, and it smells like strawberries.

“We would make awesome moms,” she says. She sees Natasha’s forehead crease with her frown.

“If the Director of S.W.O.R.D. gets pregnant, people will assume she is too emotional for the job.” _That’s what they did before, remember?_

“Well, I was thinking, and we’re sort of loaded. We could afford in-vitro. My eggs, your belly, some sperm donor with a clean bill of health, and we could have a baby. I get that it’s totally weird, and we could also plan it so that no one knows until I pop out the kid; I think we could do that, if you’re uncomfortable with giving birth.”

They sit there quietly for a few minutes. Darcy is a lot better at waiting for something now than she was even a few years ago, and Natasha will tell her if her plans are unworkable.

“I want to choose the donor,” Natasha finally says. Darcy pumps her fist in the air.

Nathan George Romanoff is born on December third. He has black hair, and he’ll probably have blue eyes. Darcy thinks he looks like her.

He _screams_ like her, apparently. She calls her mom one night, and like a traitor she just laughs at her.

“I hope you don’t end up dealing with superheroes and their messes,” she says, going over Tony’s expense account again (that _can’t_ be right), and Nathan, who is only silent when Natasha (not Darcy, not the nanny, no, _just Natasha_ ) holds him, gurgles at her. He’s a cutie pie.

“He’s going to be a doctor,” Natasha says. “He’ll help fix people.” She plays with Nathan’s little fists, letting herself blush when she turns to Darcy, who’s been staring at them for too long, probably. It’s a sign of how much she trusts them that she’ll let herself do that. “What?”

“Nothing, just looking at the people I love,” she says. Natasha kisses Nathan’s forehead, but Darcy catches her smile.

* * *

Jay’s accident comes as a shock to all of them.

“He will never regain his sight,” the doctor says, and Darcy swallows her grief. Pepper and Tony are waiting for Jay to wake up—everyone is waiting for Jay to wake up, from their allies to all their enemies, some who are going to get _shot_ by her agents—and this news is just the final blow. Darcy takes Nate, who doesn’t make a peep, to the chapel. It’s not _her_ god, but it’ll have to do.

Darcy, an avowed atheist from the age of sixteen, prays.

Jay doesn’t get his sight back. Instead, his Extremis adapts. It becomes more like Tony’s, and when he wakes up he’s created eight tiny cameras that will follow him everywhere. He doesn’t cry even though just about everyone else does; he goes on. Natasha makes him practice blind, and he works with his disability, but things are still tense.

“Nate doesn’t have anything like that to protect him,” Darcy whispers into the quiet dark of their bedroom. Natasha presses her lips to Darcy’s neck, holding her, and her smile curls against Darcy’s back.

“He has the same serum his father does. I made sure of it.”

They don’t talk about Nate’s father. He’s a friend, sure, but Darcy never understood him, prefers his partner any day. He holds Nate like he’s precious, though, and he _is_ a friend. When Natasha got shot he brought her back home and sat with her.

His brain healed from enough brainwashing to _kill_ humans. He survived a thousand foot fall and would have been able to get out if HYDRA hadn’t captured him.

“That’s good,” Darcy says. She makes a point of talking to Bucky the next time they eat dinner together, but no, Steve is still her favorite.

* * *

Thor is aging.

“You only look like you’re getting older, though, right?” Darcy says. She doesn’t feel old, but the skin on her hands is starting to get thinner. Nate is getting ready for _high school_. There’s a war going on, and the soldiers are all getting old. The babies are going to take over soon, at least with fighting.

Thor, who’s been old for as long as she’s known him, smiles at her.

“When my beloved dies, I shall shed this guise, yes. The aging process is real, though. It is not a burden.”

Darcy pats Thor’s hand, which has thinner skin than it used to.

“That’s why you’re my favorite.”

She doesn’t have to explain.


End file.
